one thing that came to mind on mr F's statment... I've seen lots of people buy fools gold --knowing it was fools gold... and tossing good rocks away because they were not as pretty but would have been with some polish.

ok decifer it yourself :)

I recall a recording engineer telling me once that "you can't polish a turd". While that is true, hard work still beats talent that won't work hard.

High school basketball coaches must play with the players they have ... at least that's the way it's supposed to be. I know a lot of coaches who know the game, and are great coaches, but don't have great players. Unfortunately, school boards don't always get it. They just look at the W-L record. A coach should be judged over the long haul ... five or six years, not three or four.

The bottom line should be how hard players play for a coach. If they don't play hard ... then there's a problem.

Just gotta say it. I hope for the best for one of the best, Larry Hasler.He is a guy who played well, coached well, and followed that up by refereeing well, and oh so often. He is a referee and if you have been to a local sporting event you no doubt have seen him, yelled at him and then sometimes said he called a great game, when you win. Joe often speaks of him. I hear that Larry is not feeling well and I know that is putting it mildly. If you love local sports ya gotta say "come on Hass and get better."

Joe, this is a little off of the subject but did think it worth mention. I was talking to Tom Oliphant today and and he talked of one of his dreams that he had the opportunity to realize, he had visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield Mass. He also visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He was surprized when he entered the Basketball Hall, to learn they start out by playing a film telling about the history of Basketball, and much to his surprize they had a piture of him, and the entire L&M team in the presentation. So if we ever get Tom to learn how to turn on a Computer maybe we can learn more of his life's journeys and maybe he will actually become involved in this way of communication.

I've never seen a good team with no Talent. Many coaches like to flatter themselves by saying they could do that, but I've never seen it.

I guess it all depends on your definition of good.

If you are looking at sports and many do and discuss their observations for life. It is a favorite point of conversation for my friends and I and sometimes complete strangers. There are things that most people agree on and one of them is trust, trust in one another and their motives. Hickory's fortunes changed dramatically when the population and players began to understand they could trust the coach as to his motives; was he in it all for himself or for the players,school, population, and the game.It became obvious he could be trusted to do what he believed was best for all and for the long run. I believe a necessary and essential ingredient in generating trust is ethics. Ethics seems to be the easiest thing for leaders to abandon on the road to that poison apple, winning at all costs. Ethics, doing the right thing, how easy to disregard when chasing a selfish goal. It is very difficult to achieve a long term goal without ethics. Perhaps one can cut a little corner here, and manage a situation occasionally to further a flawed cause looks like success but always ends in disaster. The news about sports today is all about ethics, it always has been. The names Lombardi, Landry, Stengel,Rockne, Wooden perhaps most of all, never mention ethics, they did not have to it was a taken.One could mention a host of those who did not follow this method and they live on in sports disgrace, the names not worth mention. I don't really care much for the analogy of sports and war, it is an easy one but war is different. I hate it that Joe was in a foxhole, except in training, I was in one also,in training and prayed I would never need one. Losing is not as bad in sports as it seems at the time, players talk lovingly of defeats in sports for life and often use these memories and lessons as a launching pad for their successes in life and it is inspiring. Back to ethics, doing the right thing. Learning the right from the good is an important lesson for life,and there-by sports. No coach or player is perfect and all of them know when they are doing right and many, all the good ones remember and learn from experiences of right and not right. There is also an E in Team and it stands for Ethics.

You are close Joe. The one word that you should have chosen begins with a T also, but it is not Trust, it is Talent. You can have all the Trust in the world, but if a Coach has a bunch of no-talented hooligans, who can't pass, dribble, shoot, rebound or play good defense, he's not going to have a good basketball team.

People will argue that they have seen many teams with a lot of Talent that weren't good basketball teams. True, but that is a coaching problem. What you will never see, is a good basketball team with no Talent. You just can't make a good steak out of cheap hamburger.

I echo your sentiments on trust. Thinking back to successful teams on which I've played and those I've coached, it was there.

Also, the Reilly book IS very good - it will have you in tears of laughter and heartbreak from one story to the next.